


Rationalist Batman

by ShannonPhillips



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, rationalist fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 04:03:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14228823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShannonPhillips/pseuds/ShannonPhillips
Summary: If Bruce Wayne were a rationalist





	Rationalist Batman

My name is Bruce Wayne and I am 13 years old. I considered trying to write this journal in a more “childish” fashion, in case it’s ever read by someone other than myself and there’s any debate about whether or not my thoughts as set here might be authentic. I got so far as writing “Me name, sirs, is Bruce, an’ me father was named Thom…” before I realized that what I thought of as ~childish writing~ was really just ~bad Victorian writing~ and that I, in fact, have no idea what standard thirteen-year-olds sound like in their journals and it would be foolish to think I could pass a reverse Turing Test there.

Then I realized that the above chain of thoughts would probably pretty conclusively prove that this journal is being written by the person who claims to be writing it, in some timeline where that question was ever relevant in the first place. I mean, I’m not narcissistic: I understand that there’s a >90 percent chance nobody ever cares about my thoughts after I die, and I’m forgotten like the vast majority of other humans. But in those timelines, you’re never reading this, so why would I write as if you don’t exist?

My name is Bruce Wayne, I am thirteen years old, and now we both know something about each other.

Uh, they say, when you get to freedom, you leave something behind to help the next person. I forget the exact saying. I think it was Yiddish. But like picture, you’re lowering yourself out of the tower on a rope made of sheets. Maybe you take the last sheet with you because enh, you might need a sheet (oh crap I mentioned Yiddish earlier and now my inner voice wants to sound like a New York Bubbie… hold on. Deep breaths. We’re good.) Right, you can take the last bit but not the whole rope. You leave some rope behind for the next person.

Maybe Cinderella wasn’t trying to be coy when she kicked that shoe. She was leaving something for the next girl who had to run in a hurry.

Anyway, I’m writing this for you, Cinder. I’ve thought about the other possible futures and you’re the only one that matters. 

You’re the one where I at least managed to do enough that somebody sympathetic is reading this: somebody who might learn from it, get better from it, carry the mission forward a little bit farther because of it.

Now this next part, before you read it, I need you to remember that I’m not hopelessly stupid. Just, give me this, okay, Cinder? Keep it in your mind. Alright, continue.

My problem is: My parents were murdered in front of me by a random thug.

Proposed solution: I will devote the majority of my personal time and inherited fortune to honing my strength, agility, and hand-to-hand martial skills, supplementing my elite training with an array of highly specialized gadgets each requiring a 5yr advantage over market-grade technology. Including bat-shark repellent. Gotta have the bat-shark repellent. In my spare time I will cultivate the reputation of an unserious playboy billionaire.

Stop. Remember I said I’m not an idiot. Of course I’ve considered the effective altruism critique: every $3,500 dollars donated to the Against Malaria Foundation saves a life. If I have a billion dollars to donate, then I can save two hundred and eighty five thousand, seven hundred and fourteen lives right there. Lump sum, cash value. That’s like…a small city. I can save a small city.

I have to honestly and sincerely believe that what I intend to do with my life and my crusade will save more than a small city in order to think my course of action is the moral one. That doesn’t mean it is the moral one, of course–just that I can convincingly claim to believe it was so.

I’m equivocating. The truth is, I feel this oily sense of awfulness about even thinking it. But you shouldn’t have to feel that, should you? It’s shame, that oily horrible feeling, and you shouldn’t ever have to feel shame about something that’s true. You should look true things square in the eye and be like Nietzsche’s abyss, like, Oh I see you bitch and I’m going to take you into myself and become stronger for it.

…No? Is that just me?

Is that just me, Cinder, or can you look true things in the eye? Because the truth is that I do think I can save more than three hundred thousand lives. I think things are so bad out there that one eyecatching, narrative-spinning Caped Crusader with a lot of funding (we’ll drill down into this later)—can, if he’s remotely sane about it, do a hell of a lot more pure good in the world than even the best-managed and most efficient charity. THAT IS HOW BAD THINGS ARE. I feel terrible, I feel ashamed that this is the world we live in, but since it is all I can think to do is learn karate and dress up as a bat.

–Bruce

p.s. Okay, I have to come back and add. Sorry. Alfred says I’m not supposed to say “bitch” because it’s demeaning to women and I wasn’t at all convinced that was intrinsically true, so I experimented with saying it, and afterwards I felt a nagging sense of having done something wrong that I had to drill down into. And, anyway, I won’t get into the whole meta-ethos but suffice it to say it wasn’t a first-order question, but I came away decided that I shouldn’t have said it. My ethos doesn’t allow for censorship but does allow for amendment, so I am putting this here to mark that at one time I endorsed a phrasing that I no longer endorse. BW


End file.
